Diocese of Liverpool

Thought for the Day, 2 May 2003

The Rt Rev. James Jones

Yesterday in York Minster the Archbishop of York consecrated the new Bishop of Wakefield. As with all Bishops, he charged him “to have a special care for the outcast and the needy.” This is part of a bishop's job description, which can sometimes make a Bishop, or even an Archbishop, an irksome character and a troublesome priest to those in authority!

Another little known fact is that a bishop has the legal right to visit a prison at any time to inspect the conditions, and cannot be turned away.

So, when we began to hear that asylum-seekers were being held in prison in Liverpool, I and my fellow church leaders asked to see them. The Governor opened the gates, and we met with over a hundred – all without any convictions, held alongside and in the same conditions as convicted prisoners. At least one had tried to kill himself, many were depressed and all could not understand the hostility and why they were in prison.

In the run-up to the local elections the plight of migrants has become a live political subject especially here in the North West. Liverpool is one of two centres where asylum-applications are processed. The issues are complex. There's a need to differentiate asylum-seekers from economic migrants; there's the problem of over-loading local services. One primary school in the city has to cope with children speaking 51 different languages!

Sections 55 and 57 of the Nationality Act mean that some asylum-seekers are now literally out on the streets, forbidden to work and denied welfare.

Here in Liverpool local communities, churches and the Council are supportive to them but their best efforts are not enough to assuage anxieties.

On a recent visit to America I was surprised to learn that they receive 2 million migrants a year. I was struck by the contrast. There in America, famous for its isolationism, they welcome the stranger. Here in Britain, with our self-conscious role on the world stage, we seem so luke-warm to the asylum-seekers.

Of course, the major difference is one of scale. America's vast, we're so small. Yet beneath that difference there's an attitude to be exposed which is both spiritual and moral.

It all boils down to how we see ‘the outcast' – that's a spiritual issue, and whether we feel we have a duty towards them – that's a moral issue.

It's these questions that need to be answered. before the political ones.

When I visited the prison and saw the man who had tried to kill himself, words of Jesus came to mind;

“When I was a stranger you didn't welcome me and when I was in prison you didn't visit me.”

When his audience protested, Jesus added devastatingly, “just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”